Updated: 2012/05/10

Dr. Shin'ichiro (Shin) ISHIKAWA

Applied Lingustics, Corpus Linguistics




Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics
School of Languages and Communication/ Graduated School of Intercultural Studies
Kobe University, Japan

1-2-1, Tsurukabuto, Nada-ku
Kobe, Japan


Office phone: +81-78-803-7691
Contact: iskwshin@gmail.com

Bio

Dr. Shin'ichiro (Shin) Ishikawa earned his BA and MA in English Literature at Kobe University, and his doctorate at Okayama University.
He is currently an associate professor of applied linguistics at the School of Languages & Communication, Kobe University, Japan. His research interests cover corpus linguistics, statistical linguistics, language education, and SLA. He has published many academic papers and books on branches of applied linguistics. His recent books are Corpus, ICT, & Language Education (Univ. of Strathclyde Publishing, UK) and Statistics for Language Studies (Kuroshio Publishing, Japan). He is a board member of several academic associations in and out of Japan.

Current Courses

Oral English: For freshmen and sophomores
Advanced English (Speech Presentation): For sophomores
Applied Linguistics (Corpus Linguistics) For graduate students
Applied Linguistics (Statistical Linguistics) For graduate students
Tutorials: For MA and Ph D students

Professional Associations

JACET (Japan Association of College English Teachers)
JASELE (Japan Society of English Language Education)
EuroCALL
AsiaTEFL
Japan Association of English Corpus Linguistics
Asian Association of Lexicography
Asia TEFL

Corpus



International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE) is a 1 million words leaner corpus coverining learners in eight countries and areas in Asia.

Publication

(Book)
An Exploration of a New Poetic Expression beyond Dichotomy : An Analytical Approach to the Meta-poetic Features of the Poems of D.H.Lawrence (Dissertation.com punlishing, 2005)


English Corpus and Language Education: Text as Data (Taishukan Shoten, 2008) Written in Japanese

The book mainly focuses on the application of corpus linguistics for language education. Although the word “corpus” has become widespread these days, its full potential remains to be exploited in the field of language education (O’Keefe et al., 2007, p. v), hence the aim of this work is to bridge corpus linguistics and language education.
The book consists of two parts. In the first, “An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics,” the author provides basic information and the theoretical backgrounds to corpus linguistics with a special focus on the actual use of the corpus. This is because the corpus can contribute more to language education only when teachers and students, not only professional scholars, begin to utilize corpora by themselves. The first part, which includes three chapters, is followed by the second, “Corpus and Language Education”, where the author discusses how to apply corpus linguistics for studies of the three major components of language education, namely, language, language teaching material, and language learners.
Now let us briefly examine the content of each chapter. In the first chapter, “What is a corpus,” the author introduces major corpora such as the Brown Corpus, British National Corpus, and the Bank of English as well as the so-called cyber-corpus. In the second chapter, “Techniques for corpus studies,” the corpus compilation procedure is explained in detail, while the third chapter, “Statistics for corpus studies,” outlines the basic statistical methods required for appropriate interpretation of the quantitative data obtained from corpora. Various statistical significance tests and collocation detection scores are introduced and critically compared. In the fourth chapter, “Corpus and Language Studies,” the author contrasts descriptive and prescriptive forms of grammar and insists that the use of a corpus potentially helps integrate the two. The fifth chapter, “Corpus and Teaching Materials,” focuses on corpus-based criticism and the development of language teaching materials, while in the final chapter, “Corpus and language learners,” the author shows that learner corpora can be fruitfully utilized to aid the understanding of language learners and the system of their second language acquisition.
English Corpus and Language Education is a unique book discussing wide-ranging pedagogical uses of corpora. Reviews have already appeared in several national journals, including Gekkan Eigo-Kyoiku (Taishukan Shoten) and Gekkan Nihongo (Meiji-shoten), as well as newsletters of academic associations in the fields of applied linguistics and TEFL.


English Lexicography in Japan (Taishukan Shoten, 2006) Written in English

English Lexicography in Japan is an anthology of 25 papers in the field of practical and theoretical lexicography studies by members of JACET (the Japan Association of College English Teachers) Society of English Lexicography as well as many leading external scholars. The editorial committee called for papers in June 2005. Of some sixty papers, 23 refereed and 2 invited papers were included in the book, which I, as one of the editors, believe shows the extent of and commitment to lexicographical study in Japan.
The book consists of six chapters, the first of which overviews the history of dictionaries and dictionary studies in Japan, followed by the second discussing how to deal with dictionary entries, with a focus on topics such as tokenization, multiword units, idioms, headwords, and compounds. In the third chapter, various dictionaries are compared and analyzed from a critical perspective, while the fourth chapter addresses the problem of pragmatics with a special focus on the description of discourse functions in dictionaries. The fifth chapter covers the matter of gender, in particular how to deal with so-called sexist words in dictionaries, while the sixth chapter focuses on education and the use of dictionaries in the same, discussing topics such as the use of dictionaries to teach vocabulary, the use of web dictionaries in classrooms, and the merits of electronic dictionaries as language learning tools.
Though they might not be a comprehensive representation of today’s lexicography, the papers included in this book clearly exemplify the standards of dictionary studies in Japan. The publication of English Lexicography in Japan will stimulate further discussion in the spreading branches of lexicography and help it become further established in general.
My paper, “When a Word Enters the Dictionary: A Data-based Analysis of Neologism” is included in the third chapter. Although many recent dictionaries particularly emphasize new words, the question as to which word should be treated as ‘new’ seems unresolved. In the paper, by citing the example of several new words included in the 2005 updated version of MWCD11, the author quantitatively investigates how these words are used in the attested corpus data, while careful data-based analysis is used to exclude certain words that may not qualify as new entries in the dictionaries. In concluding, the author proposes new and reliable criteria for selecting neologisms.”
Reviews of English Lexicography in Japan have appeared in several national journals, including Gekkan Eigo-Kyoiku (Taishukan Shoten) as well as Kernerman Lexicography News, which is an Israeli-based renowned international magazine in the field. The editors were awarded the JACET Academic Prize in September 2008.


(Selected Papers Written in English)

Ishikawa, S. (2004)
A Corpus-based Approach to Basic Colour Terms in the Novels of D. H. Lawrence
In J.Nakamura, N. Inoue, & T.Tomoji (Eds.). English Corpora under Japanese Eyes: JAECS Anthology Commemorating its 10th Anniversary (pp.187-212). NY: Rodopi.

Ishikawa, S., (2006).
When a Word Enters the Dictionary.
In S. Ishikawa, M. Minoru, Y. Minamide, Y. Tono (Eds.) English lexicography in Japan (pp. 39-52). Tokyo: Taishukan.

Ishikawa, S. (2007).
A Corpus-based Study on the Vocabulary of English Speech Presentations by Japanese Learners of English and English Native Speakers.
Conference Proceedings of the 6th Chulalongkorn University Language Institute's International Conference, 9-18.

Ishikawa, S. (2008).
Proficiency and speech vocabulary: A study on the NICT-JLE Corpus
In G. Weir & T. Ozasa (Eds.) Studies in Language and Text Analysis (pp. 11-20). Grasgow, UK: University of Strathclyde Publishing.

Ishikawa, S. (2008).
Motivation, attitude, and experience: A Quantitative Study of the Relation between Learner Characteristics and L2 Performance
Proceedings of CLIE-2008, 1st International Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education, 399-414.

External Positions

Board Member of JACET, ICTATLL, Asialex, Japan Association of Stylistics, Association of Japanese and English Languages and Culture, and Association of Languages and Culture
Adademic adviser for Nishinomiya City Eductaion Board
Referee of Studies in English Language Teaching, Annual Review of English Language Education, JACET Bulletin, JACET-Kansai Bulletin

Grant

Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research by Ministry of Education

Compilation of corpus-based English word list for elementary school students (2005-2006)
English vocabulary understanding by Japanese learners of English: Comparison of semantic and phonological perception system (2007-2009)
Compilation of ICNALE, International Corpus Netweork of Asian Learners of English (2010-2012)
Development of Audio-Visual Database of Learner English Production (2012-2014)

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